Uppercase L
by Random Guise
Summary: After Walter traveled the world looking to find Sean O'Connell in the 2013 movie remake "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", the photographer was the least likely person he thought he'd run into in a New York coffee shop. I don't own these characters and I've never been to Iceland either.


**A/N: A snapshot of the titular character in the 2013 remake of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" after his adventures.**

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Uppercase L

"Walter."

At the sound of his name, Walter Mitty looked up from his phone and scanned the coffee shop he was sitting in. No one was approaching his table or sitting in the chair just vacated by his girlfriend Cheryl Melhoff. He was sure it had been a man's voice, and it hadn't shouted his name so he couldn't be too far away.

"Behind you."

Walter twisted in his chair and craned his neck behind him. Sitting alone at the table directly behind him was a rough, bearded man who wore a coat even in the relatively warm spring day New York City was enjoying. He smiled when he recognized the man he had only met once before, although they had talked on the phone and exchanged notes many times. "Sean O'Connell, the man himself" he said as he got up and shook hands with the man before sitting in the chair opposite. "I haven't seen you since we played that soccer game in the Himalayas. What brings you here of all places?"

"What else brings me here, but life" Sean answered. "Before, it was Life with the trademark symbol; right now it's the one everyone's part of, including me while I freelance. Since the magazine went online only, they source from everywhere; no room for staff photographers no matter how many awards I got them." Both had worked together many years for Life magazine; Sean taking pictures around the world, and Walter taking the negatives and processing and archiving them for use by the periodical. Both were victims of the downsizing of the company, but they had only met once shortly before the last paper issue was published.

"Don't get me wrong, Sean; I love New York. But you've been all around the world, man. You've been to the top of the Himalayas, miles below the ocean, and to every continent there is and I bet most of the big islands and a few ice floes to boot. Why back here?"

"My lens points and I follow; most of the time I take the picture, sometimes I don't - but I told you that before. But as long as there's life, there's something that might need to be captured. A person can't be everywhere for everything; a picture is the next best thing to experiencing it firsthand. When Eyjafjallajökull blew and you had to outrun the ash and dust, could a picture have told someone who's never done that what it was like? No. But it helps if all you have is words to relate to someone."

"Would you take a picture on the moon?" Walter asked. "There's no life there; not that I know of, anyway - I'm pretty sure we brought all of our astronauts back." For a brief moment he had a vision of Major Tom floating through space. Bowie was singing it again, not Cheryl.

"If I'm there taking the picture, there's life; I'm alive, or at least the last time I checked. Remember the motto: 'To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life'. I'd imagine being a quarter of a million miles from home can make you appreciate that life a little more. How much do _you_ appreciate life, Walter?"

Mitty considered. "Mom is settled in retirement, Odessa is still a free spirit - I think she's in a play this week as Mark Twain's twin sister. I managed to get a job at an insurance company, still in negative handling; life's good."

"Glad to hear it. And did you ever hook up with that Cheryl person you told me about?" Sean asked as he grinned.

"Yeah, Cheryl...she's...she's great. I always used to daydream about a woman like that, but that's all it ever amounted to in the past. Then when I went looking for you, something changed; people looked at me differently. I thought it was the beard, but I shaved and it was still there. I figure it must have been the tan from being out in the open instead of tucked away in the cellar with my negatives. Anyway, I asked her out and she said yes. Life's been wonderful ever since; I guess you could say she's the quintessence of my existence. Wait, why are you grinning?" Walter said as he paused. "She's behind me, isn't she?"

"I don't know what she looks like," Sean admitted "but there is a woman standing behind you smiling. I'll take a wild guess and say yes." He stood and introduced himself.

Walter bolted to his feet and got another chair to bring to the table, a little embarrassed at not knowing she was back there while she spoke. "Walter's great; you've worked together a long time?" she asked.

"We have. We only met recently, but Walter is only person I trusted with my negatives. He took care of them, and never lost one...until recently, due to a misunderstanding. I saw the cover of the last print issue, so I know you found it again; I thought you said you had lost it along with the wallet."

Walter leaned over and pulled the wallet from his back pocket. "I did. Then I didn't. It's complicated. But back to what we were discussing; I'm still the same person."

"Duh. You _changed_, Walter. Inside. You see more of life now, through the best camera there is - your eyes. It's focused with the best lens there is - your spirit. It's printed on the best film stock there is - your heart."

"Spoken like a true photographer. But I only went to those places once; how can it still be that way? I'll never go to Iceland again. Or the Himalayas. Maybe Los Angeles, one day. If I have to."

Sean shook his head. "It doesn't matter. What was the one thing in your adventures in that last month that you found the most weird to you; something that you could have never hoped to do before?"

Boy that was a question. Walter had traveled to a country with eight people, flown in a helicopter with a drunk pilot, jumped into a freezing ocean with sharks, skateboarded down a winding volcano road, drove through the ash from a volcanic eruption, and hiked alone across a Himalayan ridge where even the Sherpas wouldn't go until he found Sean. He had even eaten at a Papa John's in Iceland. That was a lot to choose from.

"The thing that I did that I never thought I would ever do...was ask Cheryl out" Walter concluded as he took her hand in his. "Of course I imagined it; I did that for a lot of things. But I never thought that it would actually _happen_. And I didn't even need a poetry falcon."

"I'm not going to ask about whatever the hell a poetry falcon is, but I like that answer; it makes my point easier" Sean laughed. "You did something that you thought would _never_ happen. You did enough out of desperation on your journey that it gave you the courage to do something out of choice that you could have easily gone on _not_ doing. Me, I can't imagine settling down for my life with someone in a house with a nine to five job. I understand how it appeals to a lot of people, but the urge has never hit me."

"You mean you've never met someone..." Cheryl started.

"I've spent time with some great women all over the world," Sean admitted "don't get me wrong. But it was understood that it was just ships in the night. But to an Afghanistan warlord your life here in New York is as strange as his life is to you. Some people have that appreciation to begin with; others, like Walter here, had to experience life outside of his world to gain a little better understanding of things inside it. I bet you daydream a lot less now."

"He only zones out once in a while now" Cheryl answered for him. "He's there most of the time" she said as she pretended to knock on his head.

"Thanks" Walter said. "I still can't seem to pay attention to chick flicks for more than a few minutes."

"Everyone has something that can't hold their attention; I can't stand cartoons. But when you and I worked for Life, we brought the whole world - big and small - to the reader to let them see things they could never experience themselves. In my case, I got to experience everything you saw because I had to be there to record it; I've witnessed the very beginnings of life to the very last moments of it in countless ways. That shaped my understanding of the world, just as your adventure shaped how you understand things. Don't lose that appreciation of life, because in the end life is always spelled with a capital 'L' whether you're talking about the magazine or not." Sean stood up, as did Walter and Cheryl. "You've made it an uppercase 'L' Walter; you may never leave this city again, but don't lose that capitalization. It was good to finally meet you Cheryl" he said as he grasped her hand gently. "Goodbye my friend, I'm off to photograph some homeless here in the city" Sean said as he reached out to shake Walter's hand. Instead, Walter responded with a sincere but somewhat awkward hug.

"Hey, if you ever come out with a book let us know; we'll buy a copy to put on our coffee table" Cheryl said in farewell.

"Deal. Do it and maybe I'll take a picture of _that_" Sean winked.

The End

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**A/N: This movie was an entirely different flavor than the original Danny Kaye version; it didn't have any pockita-pockita in it (check out the Thurber short story if that doesn't make any sense). That being said, I enjoyed it on an entirely different level than the older film. It might be the decades between viewings of the two movies and being older as well, but as one of only a few Ben Stiller movies I've seen it was satisfying to watch. I also was surprised at how much I liked Sean Penn's character, and felt that he had some wisdom accumulated from his travels that could be imparted - hence this story.**


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